Greek Mayor Aims to Show Athens How It’s Done

"When you propose the slightest change, people say no. If you do it all at once, it is a different thing. Something has to break through." YIANNIS BOUTARISCredit
Eirini Vourloumis for The New York Times

YIANNIS BOUTARIS campaigned for mayor here in 2010, promising to shake up the bureaucracy. He did not think that this sprawling metropolis on the Aegean Sea — Greece’s second-largest city — really needed 5,000 employees. It could make do with 3,000.

But getting there turned out not to be so easy.

“I can’t fire anyone,” he said recently, leaning back in his favorite stuffed chair and inhaling deeply on a cigarette. “The law doesn’t allow it.”

Instead, Mr. Boutaris, a wiry 70-year-old with a gold stud in one ear, a buzz cut and a penchant for expletives, is trying something previously unheard of at this City Hall: employees are given job descriptions, goals, evaluations — and modest bonuses when they hit their targets.

In voting for Mr. Boutaris, the residents of Thessaloniki did what many experts predict the country will do when voters go to the polls on Sunday. They chose an outsider, someone who did not belong to the two mainstream parties that have led this country for nearly three decades, someone who held out the possibility of a new beginning.

Surveys suggest a tight race between Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the upstart and left-leaning Syriza coalition, and Antonis Samaras, who heads the center-right New Democracy, one of the two mainstream parties.

But no matter who wins the national election, few believe that Greece can go on without a major overhaul of its government. In Thessaloniki, Mr. Boutaris has been trying to do that on a local scale for 18 months, bringing his experience as a businessman to bear on the bloated work force, the tangled regulations and the huge debt that afflicts the city, much as it does the country.

Many of his efforts have prompted city workers to strike and protest. But he is undeterred. Nor does he have any patience for the shop owners who have ignored his efforts to clean up the look of this gracious but somewhat shabby city by enforcing rules about modest signage.

“There was one guy who said to me he wants Thessaloniki to be like Hong Kong,” Mr. Boutaris said with a shake of his head and an expletive. “Well, I said, ‘I don’t want to be like Hong Kong. You think your business will be destroyed because you don’t have a sign on the fifth floor? I don’t think so.’ ”

Thessaloniki was about $126 million in debt when Mr. Boutaris, a successful winemaker, was sworn into office. (His predecessor has since been indicted, along with 17 others. They are accused of stealing almost $38 million.) The city was doing a poor job of delivering basic services, most importantly in garbage collection. It was losing manufacturing jobs to Bulgaria. And as far as Mr. Boutaris was concerned, Thessaloniki was far from meeting its potential as a tourist attraction and a port city that offers easy access to the Balkans.

Mr. Boutaris has hardly solved all the issues. But he is already widely credited with increasing tourism, which he sees as a way of generating revenues without the need for expensive investment. Brushing aside centuries of tense relations with Turkey, Mr. Boutaris set off to Istanbul to initiate a campaign to attract tourists.

Shortly afterward, Turkish Airlines resumed flights here, and the number of Turks visiting the city — the birthplace of Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — doubled last year. Mr. Boutaris has also reached out to Israel because the Thessaloniki region, with a population of about one million, once had a large Jewish population. Cruise ships now stop here more frequently.

At the same time, Mr. Boutaris has taken measures large and small to rein in the budget. He hired an auditor to get to the bottom of the city’s finances, which until recently still involved cash transactions into city pension funds. (Employees were handed stacks of bills and told to make deposits. This is said to have played a large roll in the indictments.) He has forced workers to account for their overtime, started a recycling program and traded in his limousine for an economy model. So far, Mr. Boutaris has reduced costs by 30 percent.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

AND he is changing the way of life at City Hall. City Council sessions are now televised, and he has mandated daily meetings among department heads. “Can you believe that they never talked to each other?” he said.

“What I am trying to do is to open all fronts and create a huge turbulence,” Mr. Boutaris said. “When you propose the slightest change, people say no. If you do it all at once, it is a different thing. Something has to break through.”

“And you cannot step back,” he added. “If you step back, you lose.”

Mr. Boutaris is a rarity in Greece, where most people who seek higher office are career politicians. He won election by just 300 votes. He is unusually candid, by Greek standards, about himself. He has admitted to being an alcoholic and no longer drinks. And he was divorced for seven years and then remarried his wife.

Residents here talk about how approachable he is compared with the usual politician. He rides a bicycle around town and sits in cafes like everyone else, debating the city’s problems. In fact, Mr. Boutaris denies he is a politician. He says running the city is just a project, something to keep him busy now that he has turned his wine business over to his three children.

HE initially joined the Communist Party, but soon resigned. He considers himself a socialist, but belongs to no party. His goal, he said, is to make Thessaloniki a place where businesses can flourish. But he is not happy with the local merchants. The small shopkeepers, he said, do not want to pay taxes and complain that the malls are undercutting their business.

Mr. Boutaris says they must stay open later to compete with the malls, which are open until 9 p.m. But the shop owners are not interested. Another expletive.

Before taking office, Mr. Boutaris was known for his winery and for establishing a preserve to protect bears and wolves. He says his intent was to preserve the forest, but the bears were an easier selling point. “Everybody likes bears,” he said. “The forest would have been harder.”

The issues that face Greece’s mayors can be confounding. Thessaloniki is stuck with 800 garbage collectors who are on temporary contracts. As soon as they are properly trained, they leave. The system was developed, experts say, to make sure the Greek politicians were always in a position to give away jobs.

The garbage trucks are also a problem. More than half are out for repairs at any given time. So Mr. Boutaris has decided to contract the maintenance to a private company. City workers promptly went on strike, fearing further privatization. “It will be settled soon,” he said. “I’m 70 years old, and I believe I know what I am doing.”

Some who work with him say he is tired these days. But in his office, where a sign hangs that says “We are going to believe in honest things again,” Mr. Boutaris seems feisty. “I think we need about two years for things to solidify,” he said. “Then you will begin to see the effect of things we have been working on.”

Dimitris Bounias contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on June 16, 2012, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Greek Mayor Aims to Show Athens How It’s Done. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe